


we drift like worried fire

by lasting (englishsummerrain)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, Societal Collapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/lasting
Summary: Soonyoung meets Wonwoo, and the world falls apart.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/gifts).



> to my dear recipient - thank you for your endless patience in the long delays it took for me to get this finished - it truly was a rollercoaster. i don't know what you expected from this fic, and i'm honestly not even sure what i expected myself, but i hope this is enough. i've never written soonwoo before but, well, i do always like a challenge.
> 
> this work is heavily inspired by t.s eliot's the waste land, which i do recommend you go read if you have not done so already.

Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

_ Oed’ und leer das Meer. _

  
  
  
  


 

1.

  
  


The rain would wash this away, given enough time. All things would fade and the soil would turn, flowers bowing amongst the ivy choking the foundations of stone monoliths. The dead would return to east, and the living to the west, their paths crossing again only when the reapers took their hands and guided them under the cherry blossoms. This would pass, as all things have passed, as the wheel has turned for thousands of years before.

 

All would fade to dust, carried away on the barren winds.

  
  


—

  
  


Soonyoung has always lived in a different world, as if one day he’d stepped in a puddle and fell straight through to the other side. 

 

The world will deconstruct and pull itself apart before him, apparate entire streets at his feet, construct skyscrapers of glass that shatter into a thousand pieces and leave their metallic organs strewn from their guts. This unreal city, an animation where the artist is hurrying to sketch each corner as he turns it, filling in the details of the alleyway before he notices something is amiss. 

 

The problem is, of course, that something has always been amiss. From the ghostly figures that have followed him since his first memory, to the bloodstains on the subway floor—he has seen the other side and all that comes forth from it. The reapers in their black suits and the sirens with tattered hospital gowns soaked in thick, dark blood—sitting in the midst of the motorway and begging him to throw his door open and run to their rescue. 

 

He has seen the other side. 

 

There is nothing to be afraid of anymore.

 

Everything falls apart with the rise and fall of his chest and his exhaled breaths are like a death rattle—caught between his lungs, his paper bones, and glossless skin. Buildings turn to sand and the fields dry up, run thick with mud as the thunder rises through the air. Voices penetrate the storm, tangled and foreign, falling in cascading pitches like dead stars to the ruined Earth .

 

He would say there was a war going on, but that would imply they were fighting back.

  
  


—

 

The neon lights on the sign hiss and buzz as Soonyoung walks under them, fingertips rubbing the worn brickwork, head ducked to avoid the bead curtain hanging in the doorway. It fizzles out for a second, plunges the alley into total darkness before sputtering back into life, causing him to give pause as the brilliant pink glow returns and spreads its warmth against the scattered rubbish and empty beer bottles. A cigarette butt still smoulders near the back door of the kitchen opposite, and for the briefest of moments he wonders where its owner has departed to. 

 

Somewhere warmer, no doubt, for winter is rolling in, frozen clouds and snowflakes that kiss the awnings. The flowers in the planters find their roots crusted with frost and the bodies in the south must be buried deeper, lest they turn to the surface when the summer rain turns the dirt.

 

Winter is where he finds warmth, when the blanket of the snow protects him and he loses himself in the mountains. Where there is no rain and the rocks are dry, scattered with the twigs of the dead trees and the spines of the souls that could not survive the cold. January, February, the river frozen solid, when his father used to take him down the slopes on and the voices of the dead were but whispers. His footprints linger in the pristine snow and his mother calls his name from the hearth, somewhere beyond the earthly veil or perfectly placed upon it.

 

Winter is innocence—winter is a murderer. It strangles families and devours them whole, freezes the roots of the the hardiest trees and turns their crops to ruin. It paints the canvas blank and sends ice to fill their failing reservoirs, threatens them with howling winds and fingers that twist their bodies as they try to sleep in the rags handed down from their grandparents.

 

Soonyoung pulls the door shut tight behind him, but winter bangs its fists on the wood anyway.

 

Innocence is best remembered in the smallest moments, lest you linger too long and find all the cracks that let reality through.

 

The light turns sickly, greens and blues, naked fluorescent tubes blooming like futuristic flowers from the mess of pipes and wiring exposed on the ceiling. A ghost watches him warily from the doorway, gaze unflinching even as he stares straight through—like it doesn’t know he can see it. 

 

The scent of the basement room fills him, neon lights and saturated colours, a touch of spice and spilled wine, a smokey cascade of tastes that barely sit on the tip of his tongue. There’s a tinge of sulfur, and privately the thought has occurred that Mingyu may deal with demons — or be one himself, wicked grin, single fang showing when he laughed. 

 

Mingyu was non-judgemental. He leant Soonyoung an ear when the world was falling apart around them, when Soonyoung could barely walk without his head spinning into a hallucinatory death spiral. He was where the rabbit hole began, where the hours ticked away and buried the real world under layers of noise and clouds of smoke. At the end of the bar sits a succubus, her hair done in a messy bun and her make-up smeared. She shares a drink with an eyeless clairvoyant Soonyoung swears he had seen floating in the river three months ago, and the both of them laugh together, sing along to the crackling gramophone. Here they are neither living nor dying. Here they are neither human nor supernatural. Here, they are.

 

Voices roll back and forth, left and right, pitches that twist and turn. The needle never skips, and nobody ever needs to change the record. Mingyu’s laughter is warm over the din, and he pours another drink, welcomes a pair of girls coated in diamonds, their dresses smooth and liquid, sand caught in their hair. The clock strikes midnight and the voices become one, the ghost from the doorway is joined by another, and Soonyoung retires to play cards and throw handfuls of chips across the table.

 

A long time ago, when he was young and naive, he’d thought that the ghosts followed him, that he was special, somehow. Now, he realises they are simply everywhere. Some are cursed—by spiteful witches and long forgotten rituals—but so many more of them simply will not pass, try to hold on and live a shadow of the life they had before. Their soul is in the underworld, but their mind is above. They are shells, weaker than even the invalids and the dying, and they are trapped. By the time they realise this Death will not hear their pleas, and the reapers will have forsaken them. Nobody wants to die, nobody wants to let go of their grip on reality. But between life and death there is nothing. They are alone.

 

Soonyoung is not alone. 

 

He has friends, his family, his mother with her long dark hair and his father with his bedtime lullabies. He has his brother in New York, the sleepless maze of smog stricken skies and nocturnes that linger even when the dawn has broken. He has his colleagues—Jihoon who stays long hours with him in the office even when everyone else has returned home, Minghao who seems trapped in a time loop of endless forms, Joshua, sweet as nostalgia, the California boy who yearns for the waves again. They fill his days and occupy his time, keep him anchored to reality and remind him that he is alive. He is not alone.

 

Their table of five becomes six, joined by a stranger with dark hair settled in curls and a glass full of something amber. There are no words exchanged when he takes a seat opposite Soonyoung, just a tap on the table from a gloved hand, just a smirk that matches the otherworldly glow aflame in his dark eyes, begging them to challenge him.

 

It should be nothing new. It  **is** nothing new.

 

Yet he becomes all Soonyoung can focus on. He bets recklessly, shoving his chips into the pile, eyebrows raising every time their eyes meet.

 

He folds out of an obvious bait and looks to Soonyoung again with a smug smile. “You seem distracted.”  

 

The tone of his voice is velvet and low, so quiet Soonyoung almost loses the words amongst the tableside banter and hum of neon lights. It throws him off balance, more than any surprise play ever could.

 

“You seem overly concerned with my state of mind,” Soonyoung says, trying to catch his footing again.

 

“I’m only asking,” the stranger counters. “I don’t want to play against anyone who’s lost his wits.”

 

Half the table has lost their wits, multi-coloured drinks near empty and clouds of hallucinogenic smoke blooming in the air. 

 

“If you’re as smart as you seem to be acting then you’d know the answer to your own question.”

 

Soonyoung hasn’t failed to notice that the stranger does not touch his glass, passes on the pipe his neighbour blows rings from, keeps his mind sharp as the knife’s edge even amongst the slow descent into madness.

 

“I haven’t seen you drink,” the stranger says, “that’s true. But you’re not playing like a man who’s sober.”

 

The match strikes in his belly, fires beneath the city streets. He roars to fight, even more so than usual, the smallest curl of the lip from this stranger morphing his competitive spirit into something demonic. 

 

“Did your mother never teach you to mind your own business?” Soonyoung snarks. The next round is dealt and the stranger seems to hold his tongue as he looks at his cards, though Soonyoung can almost see him chewing on his words, holding back whatever retort he might otherwise have chosen to deliver.

 

“Of course she did.”

 

The two girls next to Soonyoung keep their cards as close to the table as they do their bodies to each other. He swears he’s learned their names before, but when he tries to remember the words slip through his mind like sand in an hourglass, leaving him strangely empty, as if they had stolen something more from him than a memory.

 

“You should know better then,” Soonyoung says. The girl closest to him pushes a chip across the table with a nail the colour of bleeding hearts, disinterested as she returns to her friend—was it her friend, now?—and whispers something in her ear.

 

“Knowing is different from application,” the stranger answers. Soonyoung throws a chip into the pool. He’s not sure if it’s a fifty or a twenty. He’s not sure if he even cares. 

 

“Are you trying your luck?” 

 

The stranger places his bet. “With what?” 

 

The girl beside him—Jun, he knows her name now—laughs into the back of her hand. Smoke curls from her pipe and she throws her cards to the dealer, folding out gracefully and leaving only three of them. The world swims before Soonyoung, and the leather of the stranger’s gloves creaks, his gaze patient.

 

“With everything,” Soonyoung says. Another twenty. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

 

“I’ve been around.”

 

“What are you now, then?”

 

“Here.”

 

“I said what.” Smoke curls around Soonyoung and he has to resist the temptation to breathe deep, to delve any deeper than this contact high of pinpoint colours and whirling voices. “What, not where.”

 

“I’m just myself.”

 

Soonyoung wants to press. He wants to press every button, know every secret. Who comes to his domain in this hour, smirks at him and wraps his secrets in a cocoon. The din is deafening and Soonyoung can barely contain himself, has to bite his tongue as he folds. Myself—no-one and nothing. He has to know, where he comes from, what he does, if the summer wind in his backyard tastes like thunderstorms and what flowers bloom in his gardens when spring comes past. He wants to crawl under his skin and delve deep, find out what makes him tick.

 

He’s done, defeated, pinpointed and pinned by a force he can barely name.

 

The stranger folds his cards, hands them to the dealer who places them carefully on the top of the stack. Soonyoung can’t even remember what he’s holding anymore, so infuriated by sound of those leather gloves. He glances to the last remaining opponent, who shakes his head, throws his hand in and covers his eyes, rubbing bearily at them as smoke circles blossom around him. Soonyoung collects his winnings and bows out.

 

“I’m out,” he says, doesn’t look at the dealer but the stranger instead.

 

“I guess I am too.”

 

Someone winds the crank on the gramophone and a ghost wanders through the back wall. The scene comes to a close.

 

—

 

“Out. That’s a funny name.”

 

Outside the psychedelic cloud, outside the pipes between fingers and drinks that shimmer in his hands, the stranger seems less sharp edged.

 

“Wouldn’t it be,” Soonyoung says.

 

“Wouldn’t be the worst I’ve heard, either.”

 

“What would that be?”

 

The stranger chuckles. “Slow down. That’s a question for another day, trust me.”

 

“Does that mean I won’t get your name for the night?” Soonyoung leans forward.

 

“Wonwoo.” He says runs a finger around the rim of his drink, the scent of tropical spices wafting upwards. His gloves are shed and Soonyoung is almost surprised to see his hands are unmarked, skin brandless and free from any symbol to tie him down. 

 

“I’m Soonyoung.”

 

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Soonyoung.” Wonwoo gives him a pleasant grin, raising his glass to his lips.

 

“My acquaintance?” Soonyoung laughs. Wonwoo must be supernatural, or out of time. “No-one talks like that.”

 

“Sure they do. Just like they smoked from pipes and wound the cranks on gramophones.”

 

It’s the first time someone’s acknowledged it, and it’s like the record stops, a screech that echoes in his ears. His head spins, a noise keening like the hum of a tuning fork. 

 

“I-” Soonyoung starts, pauses, loses track of his thoughts.

 

Why do they put the record player on, wind it up and smoke over their drinks? Why do all these names slip through his fingers, all these voices seem unfamiliar, a choir where every section sings a seperate song. The world seems to narrow down, to the leather of his seat and the cigarette he doesn’t remember lighting smoking in the ashtray.

 

“Are you okay?” Wonwoo says as Soonyoung stands up, head spinning. 

 

“I’m fine.” He starts towards the door, hurried. “I just need some fresh air.”

 

He pushes past a dryad with ivy curling up her bare chest, twists and turns through the heavy crowd, the exit getting further away with every step he takes towards it. The keening grows louder, pressing at his temples, and Soonyoung stumbles, catches himself on the edge of the bar and keeps going.

 

“Drink a little less, next time,” someone comments, but Soonyoung doesn’t know who, doesn’t know where, his vision reduced to kaleidoscopic pinpricks that dance in front of him like ripples in water. His legs barely carry him up the steps, the bricks smooth beneath his torn palms, and he falls headfirst through the door into the snowbank. The chill slaps him on the cheeks but it does little to wake him from his haze or quiet the noise that tears through his eardrums. He pushes weakly at the ground, fists filling with snow, his brain being pulled in two by the invisible hands that have wrenched their way under his skull.

 

“It’s below freezing out there.”

 

Soonyoung presses his palms against the cardboard coffee cup as hard as he can without sending the lid flying off. Wonwoo reaches a tentative hand across the table and lays a finger on his wrist.

 

“Soonyoung?”

 

There’s a dull ache in the back of his head—one that’s not background noise from the cars rushing down the highway outside.

 

“Yeah,” Soonyoung answers. He feels older, somehow, as if he’s lived a century compressed into a single second. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Wonwoo smiles. “Just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

 

Soonyoung’s hands squeeze tighter onto the cup and Wonwoo tugs at his wrist, reminding him to ease up a little. “I didn’t even drink,” Soonyoung says.

 

“It’s okay,” Wonwoo says. “Maybe it was something in the air. You seemed like you lost yourself there.”

 

“I did.”

 

He still feels lost, vaguely, every sensation an echo. The cafe they’re sitting in is truly empty, not even a ghost loitering in the corner, not even a hint of decay running down its windows. There’s a single light on behind the counter but no cashier, nothing to hint where the hot drink Soonyoung has been clutching for dear life has come from. 

 

“You should get some rest,” Wonwoo says. “I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

 

_ Rest. _ The word is musical, a soft chime. Rest is exactly what he needs. He should get some rest.

 

“Rest sounds wonderful.”

 

He stands from his seat, crosses the hardwood floor, pushes open the front door, the frozen glass stinging against his scabbed over palms. The snowstorm has finally stopped, but it’s still past midnight, the moon obscured by clouds and his only lighting the street lamps that create monsters from the shadow of drifts and icebound cars. He shivers, wraps his hands around his torso then remembers he forgot his drink, remembers he forgot Wonwoo. 

 

The through fades as soon as it comes, is replaced by the same one that whispers to him to go home, to get rest. 

 

Sleep it off, Soonyoung.

 

He crosses the road, ankle deep in snow, and presses his keycard against the lock.

 

Sleep it off.

  
  


—

 

_ jeon wonwoo: if you want to discuss last night, i do too. _

[seen 10:22am]

 

Soonyoung lets his phone drop from his hand and rolls over back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

  
  
  


Seoul has fallen.

 

It began in the underground, where dirty deals went wrong and left nameless bodies to be picked clean by the crows. The river swollen and bloated, choked with lost souls and silent screams, broke its banks and pulled at the foundations of the dwellings stacked on its edge. The streets were strewn with lonely hearts and everywhere he looked there was decay, there was collapse, tar roads melting in the dead of winter and frost grasping at all the land it could reclaim from the human race. Between the neon nightmare and the poorest souls, dirt floors and straw roofs, came nothing, a great wave of silence that swallowed them up, fueled by greed and an endless hunger.

 

There was nowhere for Soonyoung to go but south, where the ocean burst against the jagged rocks and the lillies bloomed like silent mourners. Towards the unreal landscape of mud pocked hills and burnt-out car frames, hoping, praying, that there would be something different. He has been to Busan, to Ulsan, to the eastern sea with its fishermen and factories, glittering bridges along the harbours, and he remembers one thing time and time again—that his visions would lessen. It’s his only choice, his only hope, that somehow this catastrophic beast has not swallowed everything whole.

 

He leaves in the middle of the night, packs a suitcase full of clothes and leaves a message on his mother’s answerphone, tells her he loves her, and to be safe. The radio spits broken music and all the ghosts in Korea spill forth from the city, drifting alongside him, passing through his bumper with a whisper and laying down to sleep in the middle of the road.

 

The flickering lights of towns hugging the slopes of the hillsides rush past, blinking in and out of existence as the mountains grow taller and the stars scatter through the inky sky. Night wraps him in its embrace and the tiredness weighs heavy on him, his eyelids drooping and the road blurring before him. The ghosts start to look corporeal and he almost swerves off the road to avoid them, the blaring of the car horn behind him catapulting him back into wakefulness.

 

He has to stop. He has little choice but to halt his escape and pull into the parking lot of a love motel, where the neon signs cast heavy shadows across his skin and the colours shift as he breathes. He turns off the engine and lets the world catch up with him, all his scattered thoughts settling in his skull like the last confetti of the parade.

 

A faded ghost drifts past him, edges trailing off like paper banners.

 

He’s had so long to deal with the reality of what’s happening but still it’s a shock when it comes, when the nightmarescape he’s been trapped in so long becomes real life. He had thought this world and his own to be two parallel lines, destined to never meet, but he had been wrong and the collision is violent, orchestrated by a blind architect who had tried to stitch them together and ended up with an abomination that barely supported itself.

 

The strange thing is, he finds relief in all of this. No more dodging imagined obstacles. No more wondering if his reality matches everyone else. This is all real now, and it’s like a section of his brain has been partially freed from the constant lining up of collapsing buildings and burnt-out homes with what the world might look like in reality.

 

The bitter night nips at his heels where his pants inch up, and, not caring how stupid he looks, he pulls a blanket from the back of his car to trudge across the asphalt.

 

There’s no front desk, no attendant. Just an electronic screen, ready for check-in. The automatic doors slide shut behind him with a soft click, then open again, bringing a gust of cold wind. He ducks away in a bid to give the person behind him privacy, turns toward the hallway leading to the rooms.

 

“Soonyoung?”

 

Soonyoung stops, turns slowly on the spot and squints in the low lighting because hell if he doesn’t recognise that voice.

 

“Wonwoo?”

 

“What’re you doing here?”

 

“What’re _you_ doing here?” Soonyoung pulls the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders.

 

“I need to sleep,” Wonwoo says. He looks grubby from the road, his hoodie faded and worn, flecks of sauce on the neck. Only one strap of his backpack is slung over his shoulder and he’s wearing sunglasses inside, for whatever god-forsaken reason.

 

“I guess that’s a good reason.” Soonyoung peers behind Wonwoo, covertly trying to check if he might have anyone accompanying him. “You don’t uh, have anyone special waiting for you?”

 

Wonwoo’s head whips around faster than Soonyoung thought was humanly possible, checking the entrance, the hall leading off from the lobby, then over Soonyoung’s shoulder. “What? Is there someone following me?” He motions to take his sunglasses off, stops mid air as if he thought better of it and shuts his hand in a fist. “You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot, did you?” he asks.

 

“No?” Soonyoung says, hesitant. “I just thought—you know.” He shuffles his feet and stares at the carpet for a second. “It’s a love hotel.”

 

Wonwoo deflates. “Oh. No. No, not at all. Nothing like that.”

 

Soonyoung tries not to let the relief that floods him affect him, neither physically nor mentally. “Same boat then, huh.”

 

Had he really been jealous?

 

“Same boat.”

 

Soonyoung pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders. “Where are you headed?”

 

“Busan,” Wonwoo says. The lights flicker, drop low for a few seconds in a way that leaves only fluorescent strips along the floor of the lobby.

 

“Want to hitch a ride?”

 

The light returns to the room, bringing Wonwoo’s shy smile with it. “I guess,” he says. “My ride went east. Not sure I have much choice now.”

  


—

 

Wonwoo eats slowly, like his breakfast is something for him to savour and not a pile of slimy noodles floating in a flavourless soup a vague shade of orange. Soonyoung drinks his down as quick as possible to avoid having the (lack of) taste in his mouth for too long, but Wonwoo is slow and deliberate, chewing every mouthful and staring off into the distance like the scattering clouds might hold the meaning of life. His eyelids droop and his hair falls like waves across his forehead, mussed from sleeping and looking so soft Soonyoung wants to reach out and run his fingers through it.

 

He turns, slow enough that Soonyoung has no excuse for the fact he’s caught staring. Wonwoo merely raises an eyebrow, and Soonyoung is sure he’s blushing somewhere on the tip of his ears. He doesn’t break eye contact, and it takes him a second to realise in the morning light that there’s something not quite right.

 

“Your eyes are yellow,” Soonyoung says. Wonwoo smiles, blinks lazily.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Not amber, not gold, but yellow, the colour of brimstone, brilliant and bright, giving his sleepy gaze a streak of the other world.

 

“Were they always… like that?”

 

“I wear lenses,” Wonwoo answers. “Or sunglasses.” He twirls a noodle on the end of his chopstick then slurps it up, pausing dramatically as if he needs the extended time to think. “But yes, they have always been like this.”

 

“Why?” Soonyoung asks, wondering briefly if it had been rude to ask a question like that. He doesn’t know the protocol for asking non-humans about anything, really, usually just talked around the subject if it came up unless the person was intoxicated enough to explain the scales growing from the backs of their hands or just why exactly they had a tail.

 

Wonwoo chews for another second more, swallows, then pushes his bowl away.“Vampires have red eyes because they drink blood. Dryads have green eyes because they’re part of nature. What’s yellow, Soonyoung?”

 

“Butter?” Soonyoung hazards. He’s kind of annoyed at the cryptic question, but he realises as soon as he says it what the answer really is.

 

“Yeah, I’m a butter monster,” Wonwoo says, his expression blank.

 

“Brimstone,” Soonyoung answers, seriously this time.  Wonwoo nods, looking out off over the hill tops again. The sun has fully crested their peak and the light glows soft against his skin, dusky gold.

 

“You don’t see many of my kind, I wager.”

 

“You’re a demon.” Soonyoung hushes his voice and leans in a little closer. He’s never seen a demon before. He wonders if Wonwoo has a tail, or fangs, or claws, or an army of imps he keeps in his back pocket to unleashed on annoying humans. Annoying humans like Soonyoung.

 

“You villianise us a lot more than we deserve,” Wonwoo says with a nod. “But yes. In most human cultures I would be a demon. Or a devil, I suppose. That feels a lot more refined.”

 

Privately Soonyoung thinks Wonwoo looks anything but refined—somewhere more between “barely awake rockstar” and “homeless”, but he keeps his mouth shut about that for once.

 

“Cool,” he says, instead. Wonwoo stares at him as if he’s waiting for the rest of the sentence, but Soonyoung doesn’t really have a follow up. He snaps one end of his chopstick in half, stabs it through the leftover polystyrene bowl in an attempt to stall and sputters out, “So what’s it like?”

 

“What do you mean, what’s it like?”

 

“Being a demon,” Soonyoung says.

 

“What do you mean, what’s it like being a demon?”

 

He doesn’t get why Wonwoo is being obtuse. It’s a fair question; he’s never met a demon before.

 

“Better than before,” Wonwoo says, crossing his legs, uncrossing them, then standing abruptly, almost knocking over his stool. “We should go. Get on the road.”

 

He’s off before Soonyoung can even reply, not bothering to check both ways as he crosses the carpark and waits on the center island for Soonyoung to catch up.

 

“Which car is yours?” he asks. Soonyoung gestures with his keys, unlocking it and Wonwoo turns heel again, forcing Soonyoung to scramble after him with his heart pounding in his ears, wondering what the hell he did that caused such a change in behaviour. Was it a demon thing? Were they all like this? When he reaches the car and climbs into the driver’s seat he’s ready to apologise, but Wonwoo continues the conversation with only a brief acknowledgement of the fact he’d just stood up in the middle of it.

 

“Sorry,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans stiffly. “It’s not good. I mean, things aren’t good where I’m from. They’re not good here either, but at least they’re not as bad as they are out there.”

 

He pauses as the engine roars into life. Soonyoung pulls out of the parking lot onto the empty road and glances at Wonwoo, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, he asks, “Where’s there?”

 

Wonwoo gestures vaguely to the sky. “We would just call it home.” He pauses, somber. The river joins the roadside and a flock of geese skim along its brown surface, dipping in and out in search of prey. “It’s not home anymore.”

 

“Earth is, now?” Soonyoung asks.

 

“No.”

 

The railroads are disused and rusted. The livestock have departed the pastures. No crops grow in the tilled fields and the trees sag towards the steepled drains. Wonwoo has nothing more to say, and Soonyoung is wise enough not to ask. The river bends aways from them, taking the calls of the birds with it and the town they had gained respite from leaves them amongst mountains which swallow them with silence. Soonyoung stares blankly ahead, the neverending highway rising to meet him.

 

It feels as if they have departed this life and headed straight through limbo to the next.

 

They pass through pockets of towns, villages, all as empty as the next, as if the occupants had left only a minute ago. Bikes stood against lampposts, footballs resting in the middle of fields, houses with their doors wide open and dogs sniffing at trash piles. Soonyoung pulls over to fill up an extra can of petrol and there’s a ghost sitting on the kerb with a phantom cigarette in his spidery hands. He gives Soonyoung a glare, as if he’d committed a crime by daring disturb the peace. Soonyoung makes the choice to leave him alone, fills up the car and his can, waits for Wonwoo while he grabs a box full of candy bars from the empty gas station. The high noon sun is stark and bright and the heat rises off the pavement in long, rolling waves, distorting the hillsides and the bare ankles of the ghost who never takes his eyes off Soonyoung even as he pulls off the plaza a little too fast, the car jumping and Wonwoo’s head knocking against the roof.

 

He mutters an ‘ow’ but seems more content to munch on his candy, offering a bar to Soonyoung with sticky fingers and unwrapping it for him when he notes that he needs both hands to drive.

 

The highway rolls on, the steady tick of the asphalt and the hum of the air-con the substitute for the hundreds of conversations Soonyoung wants to have but doesn’t know how to start. It feels like the more Wonwoo says to him the more he realises just how deep the hallways of his life run—how Soonyoung is just standing in the entrance hall and there are thousands of hidden passageways and closed doors that he had never known existed just waiting in the shadows. He wishes Wonwoo would just hand him the keys, open his mouth and let all his secrets flow out like a motion picture. The things Wonwoo must have seen, incomprehensible to human eyes, the places he’d been and things he’d done. Soonyoung doesn’t know anything about him, truly—but he wants to. He has to.

 

The thought is interrupted as flock of magpies swoops overhead, so low Soonyoung thinks they’re about to crash into his windscreen. He lets out a shriek and ducks, swerving slightly and then righting himself, grateful again for the empty road.

 

The cackle that Wonwoo lets out is deep and brimming with joy, a full body knee-slapping laugh that causes something to turn in Soonyoung’s stomach; a kind of adoration he hasn’t felt in a long time. A locked door slamming open.

 

“Afraid of birds?” Wonwoo asks, full of wry amusement. Soonyoung screeches again, letting out the last of his fear.

 

“I’m not scared of birds! They were going to hit us!”

 

“I think their self-preservation instinct is stronger than their suicidal will, Soonyoung.”

 

“You don’t know that!” He checks the rear-vision mirror, half-scared of seeing a dark cloud following him and finding himself trapped in a Hitchcock movie.

 

“Birds are pretty smart.”

 

“Not smart enough to fly far away from a moving vehicle, clearly!”

 

Wonwoo won’t stop laughing. Soonyoung wants to shove his hand in his face to shut him up, but he has the strangest notion Wonwoo might bite his fingers if he does so. He wonders if demons are cannibals—or if it would even be cannibalism, since they’re not the same species. It wasn’t cannibalism when a bird ate another bird, was it? They might be of the same scientific grouping, but similarities ended there. Was Wonwoo above him on the food chain?

 

“Do demons eat humans?” Soonyoung asks, even though he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.

 

“Some of them,” Wonwoo turns to meet his eyes, staring at him with a small smile and letting the words hang in the air for a pause. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

 

Soonyoung’s gaze snaps back to the empty highway and he squeaks, “Really?!”

 

“Of course we don’t,” Wonwoo says, “but you should have seen your face.” The mirth leaks through to his voice and Soonyoung’s cheeks start to heat up in embarrassment.

 

“That’s not something to joke about!” Soonyoung reaches out and shoves Wonwoo who, judging by the pained expression on his face, seems to be trying his hardest to suppress his laughter. Soonyoung’s heart pounds, though he’s not sure if it’s from the jumpscare of the bird flock, or from the brief but worrying fear he’d had that he was about to become someone’s dinner.

 

Wonwoo lets out a snort and covers his face with his hands, shoulders shaking silently. “Why would I want to eat you?”

 

“I’m a delicacy!” Soonyoung protests, his want to win an argument apparently winning over his self-preservation instinct. “I could be the only human in South Korea right now!”

 

“Then I’d keep you alive as a bargaining chip.” Wonwoo is trying to be stoic, trying to play it cool, but every glance Soonyoung steals shows a grin on his face, something that might be mistaken for fondness if he didn’t think himself wiser.

 

“I’m too annoying to be a bargaining chip.”

 

“You say that like it’s a badge of honour.”

 

“It is. I’d be the first prisoner of war to be released just because they were so annoying.”

 

“What makes you say that?”

 

_It’s a coping mechanism for the fact the world has been falling apart ever since I took my first step._

 

“Kids at school always told me that,” Soonyoung says. Technically the truth. He had, apparently, been obnoxious as a child, enough that his ‘hyperactive’ imagination and tendency to fidget with everything in arm’s reach had him sent to detention more than enough times to turn his mother’s hair grey.

 

“Human children might be one of the most awful groups of offspring that have ever existed,” Wonwoo says. The road has been on a steady curve eastward, enough that he finally takes his sunglasses out and rehashes his earlier outfit. It’s almost a shame—Soonyoung has rapidly become rather enamoured with being able to look into his eyes at this point.

 

“I don’t think you’re annoying.”

 

Wonwoo’s voice comes out quiet, softer than his previous words. Soonyoung goes to refute the statement but holds his tongue at the last second, turns to see Wonwoo gazing pointedly out the window at the empty paddocks. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

 

—

 

Ulsan reigns silent.

 

Early afternoon light scatters off the river waters glittering like all the gems of the earth, an ornamented welcoming committee for just the two of them. Forklifts are frozen with containers on their forks, arranged like toy trucks along the length of the shipping yards, a parkour course just waiting to be conquered. They follow the bend of the highway, straight through the heart of the city, the water babbling along beside them and the only sound the cacophony of birdsong ringing out through the pale skies.

 

Unlike Seoul Ulsan is put together. Where the Han had been turbulent and choked with refuse Taehwa is soft, flowing harmoniously alongside the smooth, empty streets. There’s no great fists of metal punched through the concrete docks and the boats in the harbour aren’t rain lashed and faded. A few flowers bloom through cracks in the pavement, but as Soonyoung stops the car and parks in the middle of the road (already so sure now that no harm will befall them), he smells nothing but the sea breeze, no acrid rust or dank decay that assaults his senses.

 

The passenger door slams shut and Wonwoo takes the same long, deep breath as Soonyoung, exhaled as a sigh. “Everything’s gone.”

 

The cranes creak in the wind and a few pieces of scaffolding rattle against the metal poles holding them up. Wonwoo’s boot sounds like the crack of a bone where it hits the road and Soonyoung can’t help but feel the silence curl around him.

 

It feels as if all the creatures in the world have departed.

 

“Gone,” Wonwoo repeats himself, the words carried away on the wind. “Gone, gone, gone.”

 

He leans down on the edge of the road, runs his hand through the emerald grass and pulls a few blades from the dirt. “Even the nymphs have left.”

 

“Maybe they’ll be back,” Soonyoung says. He thinks of the nymphs and the dryads, half woman half plant, skin like bark and flowers growing from their shoulder blades, their snakelike eyes and the scent of crushed grass that followed them everywhere they went. How the plants in the room would always lean towards them, stand taller in their presence. The long hikes he’d take along the city wall and the flashes of their gaze he’d catch in the undergrowth, their spears of rosewood and silent steps. Nature herself—gone.

 

“I don’t know why they’d ever leave.”

 

Uneasy, uneasy. The wind howls through the empty harbour and a cloud covers the sun, sends shivers across Soonyoung’s bare skin. This is his country, his world, his home, and yet he feels like he is not welcome here. He feels like even Wonwoo would fit this silent city better than him, with his pursed lips and his silent gaze, yellow as the depths of the hell he must have been formed in.

 

“What do we do?” Soonyoung asks. Wonwoo, still crouched on the edge of the median, pushes his fingers into the dirt and shakes his head.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Do we go to Busan? You wanted to go there right?” Soonyoung asks. His voice rises a little, panic coming up his throat.

 

“Is there any point?”

 

“Of course there is,” Soonyoung says, “you wanted to go there. Why? What’s there? There has to be something. Something left, someone. Anything.”

 

“Soonyoung,” Wonwoo starts, rising up to stand at eye level. “Take a breath.”

 

“I am breathing,” Soonyoung says. His heart pounds in his ears and he feels it slam against his rib cage, feels the chills sweep along his skin. The skies are empty and grey and the lap of the water at the edge of the road sounds like hunger, sounds like the thirst of a land that has been starved for too long. “I’m breathing, okay,” he repeats.

 

“Slower,” Wonwoo says. Soonyoung takes a deep gulp, feels his chest expand almost to its limit, releases it.

 

“Where do we go?”

 

Wonwoo shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  


—-

  


Soonyoung spots the first sign of actual life since their departure from the north before Wonwoo does. A huddle of black umbrellas, far across the city square, wide brimmed hats and shopping carts filled with bags wheeled in front of them.

 

“Are those people?” Soonyoung asks, perking up from where he’d almost dozed off sitting in the front window of the abandoned book cafe they’d curled up in. Wonwoo looks up from his book, tilts his head slightly and then grins, honest-to-god grins from ear to ear, the kind of smile that makes Soonyoung’s heart do a belly flop and dance around his ribcage. It lights up his entire face and Wonwoo jumps up, almost dancing on his toes.

 

“Those are vampires!” he says. Soonyoung’s head snaps back to the group, trying to make out any details he can, trying to process the fact he’s never heard _anyone_ so excited to see a vampire before.

 

“That explains the umbrellas,” Soonyoung says. Wonwoo practically bounces on the balls of his feet as he shuts his book and hastily shoves it into his bag.

 

“I’m going to go say hello! An actual coven on Earth! In Asia of all places too.”

 

He races out the door, a few stray papers spilling from his bag and the door of the cafe shutting with a loud ring of the bell. Soonyoung shouts after him, calling for him to wait, but Wonwoo is gone, like a switch has been flipped, scurrying across the empty plaza and bellowing a greeting to the group of vampires, who stop and stare as he comes toward them. Soonyoung rests his chin on the windowsill and watches for a while, Wonwoo being readily accepted into the fold and following them to the shade of a cafe where they all spread themselves under the beach umbrellas.

 

He makes the move to leave his seat, eventually, enjoys the last few rays of the sun before trekking across the hot concrete to under the awnings where their gang has settled.

 

“There he is,” Wonwoo says, smiling brightly at him.

 

The warmth doesn’t reach him, Soonyoung feeling like an other just as he had begun to think he and Wonwoo fit together. With little care for the fact that the creatures he’s sat beside once hunted humans for amusement Wonwoo beckons him over, shuffles across in his seat to give Soonyoung room to sit down and offers him a can of soda. He takes it, grasps it tightly with both hands and tries not to shake. Every single pair of viciously red eyes is upon him, and Soonyoung gets the feeling not that he’s food, thankfully, but still that he is not welcome here. This Earth that was once his home is no longer his anymore.

 

“You’re not a necromancer, are you?”

 

Soonyoung jumps at the voice, some of the most archaic Korean he’s ever heard coming from the mouth of the vampire seated beside Wonwoo. Her hair is cut short and neat and her skin looks sallow, waxy like parchment paper stretched a little too thin over her bones. Her body would not be a day older than Soonyoung’s, still young and beautiful, and her eyes are the brightest of all of theirs, specked with amber and rusty reds.

 

“Are you asking me?” he says. She rolls her eyes and taps an elongated nail on the table surface.

 

“I would hope so, yes,” she says, “Death at least had the forethought to ban this one’s kind from messing with the afterlife too much.”

 

Wonwoo scrunches up his nose. “A curse suffered for a millenia,” he sighs. “I would call it prejudice, but I actually can’t disagree with that choice. We did do some awful things.” He glances at Soonyoung, as if he’s trying to read past his face and dig down to his bones. “Why the hell would you think he’s a necromancer, though?”

 

“I’m not a necromancer,” Soonyoung says. He wants to laugh at the thought, tell them the dead should _stay_ dead but he’s not sure it’s entirely appropriate considering that, well, he’s surrounded by members of the undead, save for Wonwoo.

 

“Curious,” she says. She glances over her shoulder at one of her companions, a much older woman with hair like gossamer silk and an ornate necklace heavy on her bosom, then tilts her head towards Wonwoo. “Surely you see it?”

 

“I don’t see anything,” Wonwoo says. “Am I supposed to?”

 

“I thought you said were good with runes. This one has been touched by death countless times,” she says. She holds out her hand, palm upwards, and Soonyoung notices just how deep her fate lines run, each of them entrenched with something black that made her skin seem like miniature maps, valleys and canyons never to be navigated. “Do you mind if I touch you?” she asks.

 

Soonyoung holds out his hand, hesitant. The conversation around them has stopped and they are the center of attention, this matriarch and Soonyoung, the living and the dead, her overflowing elegance almost stifling. He feels so very, very human.

 

“No,” he says, “it’s okay.”

 

“I promise you’re safe,” she smiles, and Soonyoung sees a flash of her teeth, rows of razors hidden behind her perfectly pursed lips. She lifts her hand, then pauses. “My name is Jisoo.”

 

“Soonyoung,” he says. She bows.

 

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

 

Her palm slides against Soonyoung’s and he feels something trickle down the back of his neck, like the first few drops from a wrung-out sponge. Her touch is like fine leather, gentler than he expects, and it causes him to shiver. His skin lights up, spindling crisscrosses of monochromatic veins like treasure trails to fingerprints—across the back of his palm, around his wrist. He raises his other arm and finds the same has occurred, four near- perfect circles with no whorls set against his bicep like a tattoo.

 

“Please tell me you can see this now,” Jisoo says. The vampires behind her murmur, some of them turning to their own conversations again. Wonwoo nods, reaches out and then stops, just inches from Soonyoung’s skin. Their eyes meet and there’s a crackle of tension, Wonwoo’s tongue darting out to lick his lips at the same time Soonyoung sucks a breath between his teeth, anticipating something he’s not quite sure of. Jisoo releases her grip, oblivious, and warmth floods his body, the tension breaking like a wave against the shore and causing Wonwoo to almost simultaneously snatch his own hand back.

 

“You,” Jisoo says, “are very much alive.” It takes Soonyoung a second to focus on her, to stop trying to puzzle out the pieces of Wonwoo and dig into his motivations. “You are not undead as we are, obviously,” Jisoo continues, “but yet Death has laid her hands on you, over and over. If I were one to bet—and trust me, I only bet on those odds which are ever so in my favour—I would say that even your soul has her hand wrapped around it.”

 

Soonyoung draws a long breath, and Jisoo glances at Wonwoo. “Sorry if I were to dash your hopes?”

 

“I don’t want his soul,” Wonwoo says. There’s a trace of disgust in his voice that makes Soonyoung’s heart catch in his throat.

 

Jisoo leans back in her seat and curls her fingers, teeth flashing again. “That was presumptuous of me, I apologise.” She turns to Soonyoung. “You’re a very curious human.”

 

“Thank you?” Soonyoung says, unsure. His mind is racing; it’s like someone has given him the answer to a question that he’d been asking for so long he’d forgotten it. “Is that,” he stops, tripping over himself, hundreds of questions bubbling up to the forefront of his mind. “Sorry, is that why I can see ghosts?”

 

Jisoo’s eyebrows raise. Wonwoo’s go higher, almost comically disappearing behind his curls.

 

“You can see ghosts?” Jisoo says. “My, my. No wonder you seem so close to the dead.” Her nails rattle against the table, falling like fingers on piano keys.

 

“You can see ghosts?” Wonwoo repeats. The vampires that had once turned to their kin have returned to listening to their conversation, and Soonyoung feels like he’s been put under a lens.

 

“Yes,” he says, “always. For as long as I can remember. I’ve seen-” he stops himself. Wonwoo’s eyes are unnerving, hypnotic, glowing and wide, focused entirely on him as if there is nothing else in the world, nothing more important than the words that might fall from Soonyoung’s lips. “I’ve seen a lot of things,” he finishes. The world falling apart around him, and the reality they now live in. This rollercoaster he’d never meant to ride. Dying succubi, werewolves with pleas on their lips, vampires with eyes the colour of rust, so blood starved, so weak from the polluted daylight they were barely alive. He’s seen things that no human was meant to see and—was it all for this purpose?

 

For Death to lay her hands on him.

 

“A lot of things,” Jisoo repeats.

 

Soonyoung nods. This premonition, these dreams that came to pass, all these visions of destroyed wastelands and dried up rivers—they are his. He doesn’t wish to share them with anything, least of all this coven of strangers that could barely understand what they meant to him, what had befallen his home.

 

The wind howls across the square, catching fast-food wrappers and litter and sending them scattering into the air. Soonyoung shivers and Wonwoo takes notice, extends his fingers to brush against his elbow in some approximation of comfort—a gesture he appreciates for all the weight it has behind it.

 

“I see,” Jisoo says. Her nails rap on the table, again, again, repeating themselves like some insidious symphony. Soonyoung doesn’t like her. He doesn’t like her eyes, doesn’t like the way she regards him as something to be picked apart—something lesser. A curiosity, saved only from being a meal by the grip of Death around his soul.

 

“Why do you care?” Soonyoung asks.

 

“You’re an oddity. I like that.”

 

“So you won’t eat me?” Soonyoung says. Wonwoo starts to laugh, stops when he realises that Soonyoung is deadly serious.

 

“Of course not,” Jisoo says. “You’re safe. As I promised. Though I would think you’d like to leave here. It’s not going to be particularly hospitable in the coming days, and I can’t say my offer of protection extends to those of less civilised species.”

 

“Then where do we go?”

 

She tilts her head, watches him carefully. After a second’s pause she huffs out a laugh and turns away.“Go west. Through Daegu. You’ll find this realm is more malleable than you’d think. Death may have the answers you seek—though I’ve never been particularly fond of her.”

 

“I don’t think I’ve met a vampire who was,” Wonwoo says. Jisoo smiles, sarcastic, mouth full of knives.

 

“And long may it remain that way, demon.”

  


\--

  


The road seems infinitely longer than it should be, the mountains forever winding and thunder brewing on the horizon.

 

“Are you sure you didn’t miss the turn-off?” Wonwoo says.

 

“There’s no turn-off,” Soonyoung says, “it’s straight through to Daegu. I don’t understand.”

 

“We’ve been driving for four hours.”

 

“I know,” Soonyoung says, “that’s enough time to fucking get to Seoul.”

 

A raindrop breaks across the window screen, its impact cracking like a marble on tile.

 

“And besides, there’s no stretch of highway in the country with such few houses along it.”

 

The last sign of true civilisation they’d seen had been before they’d entered a tunnel near Gyeongju, its maw swallowing them up and spitting them out into the monstrous mountains that loomed all around them. Beyond that, there had been nothing, except for occasional villages devoid of life, settlements that seemed like they’d been abandoned or frozen in time.

 

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Wonwoo asks.

 

“I don’t know,” Soonyoung says. It scares him to admit it, but he’s lost. His phone still has no service, has been displaying the same message since they entered Ulsan, and he hadn’t had the thought to pre-download any maps. Why would he when he lived in the most connected country in the world?

 

Pending societal collapse had not been high on his list of threats.

 

“We should stop, then,” Wonwoo says. Another raindrop falls, and another, fat spheres that burst violently against the hood of the car. “Or turn around.”

 

Soonyoung feels paralysed, caught between hoping they’ll finally break through to civilisation or wanting to double back to safety.

 

“We can stop,” he says, hesitantly. “At the next village.”

 

The thunder comes, deep and heavy, rolling down the depth of the valley and penetrating through to Soonyoung’s bones. In its wake comes the rain, blitzing down the dry road like a rush of bulls, slamming into them with a deafening clangour. Soonyoung scrambles for the windshield wipers, temporarily blinded by the force of water suddenly washing over them. It’s like the world has been inverted, the ocean now above them and all its might pouring down to the Earth.

 

“Holy shit,” Wonwoo says, his words almost drowned by the sound of the rain hammering on the roof. “Did you say something bad?”

 

“Apparently?” Soonyoung hazards. “Can you keep an eye out for a turn off?”

 

“Sure,” Wonwoo says, then almost immediately Soonyoung sees an exit, the reflective material of the sign catching in the headlights. “There’s one right there.”

 

“Yeah, I see it,” Soonyoung says. He turns on the indicator and pulls off, squinting at the sign to try and see exactly where he’s going this time. “Could you read that?” he asks, the word indiscernible to him amongst the sheets of rain falling. Another clap of thunder rumbles threateningly as Wonwoo shakes his head.

 

“It looked like all the words had melted off,” he says. Soonyoung has to strain to hear him, his soft, low voice barely adjusted for the background noise. It’s disconcerting, all the hairs on the back of his neck standing up at the indifference in Wonwoo’s voice. He doesn’t have time to examine it further as the rainfall thickens, thunder following.

 

The road winds, left, right, dips down further into the valley and then dramatically veers back up, curving around another corner to reveal lights in the distance, twinkling like fireflies amongst the storm.

 

“Is that…?” Wonwoo starts.

 

“I think so,” Soonyoung says. He doesn’t realise until they’re closer that there’s a growing sense of unease gnawing at him, and that the sight of respite has suddenly fought back at it, alleviated some of the weight on his shoulders.

 

The village is no more than twenty houses at most, situated in the shadow of a hillock, the entire area illuminated by streetlights and scattered with a few rust coated car frames. Soonyoung parks under the only one with a carport, not willing to risk the rain, kills the engine and sits. Stops. Wonwoo opens his door but doesn’t get out, and Soonyoung can feel his eyes on him, waiting patiently for whatever he might say.

 

He doesn’t even know, in all honesty, what he wants to say. His head is spinning, feels full to the brim and overwhelmingly empty at the same time, pulled apart as he tries to make sense of everything that’s happening to him. Everything that has happened, and what’s led him here, to this place that might not even exist with a fucking demon riding in his passenger seat.

 

As soon as the thought crosses his mind he realises how unfair it is. Wonwoo doesn’t deserve any ire—he’s innocent, maybe more innocent than Soonyoung. Maybe luckier than Soonyoung. At least he knows what he’s running away from.

 

Soonyoung opens the driver’s door and gets out. The air is breathlessly cold, the roar of the rain like all of hell screaming in his ears, breaking against the pavement with such force that it splatters the toe of his shoes before he even has time to think about it. Wonwoo follows him mutely to the side entrance of the house, which Soonyoung finds unlocked.

 

“I really hope nobody lives here,” he says, pushing the door open and peering inside. For once he finds himself hoping that his assumption that the human race has been obliterated is correct. There are no lights on inside, no sound to indicate that anyone is living in the home.

 

“Hello?” Soonyoung calls out. He knocks on the frame of the house and calls out again, but receives no answer.

 

“We’re all alone,” Wonwoo says.

 

The lights come on automatically, illuminating the empty hallway and the lowered screens separating the rooms. He toes off his shoes, realising only then that the floor is warm—someone has lit the heating.

 

“Check the stove.”

 

“I’m checking the bath first, thank you,” Wonwoo says. “I’m about ready to kill a man for a hot shower. I’d watch out if I were you, because you’re the only one around.”

 

Soonyoung scrunches his nose and follows the hall downwards, while Wonwoo ducks into the side rooms, searching.

 

“I found the bedroom,” he calls.

 

Just the mention of sleep makes Soonyoung’s bones ache, his entire body tired. The vampires had partied all night and he’d had little will to try find another unlocked building to sleep in, had chosen to endure the shouts and festivities until the morning sun had risen and barely gotten any sleep as a result.

 

“Are you hungry?” Soonyoung asks, from the middle of what looks like a dining room, the table in the middle still set up with empty dishes, sets of cutlery at their sides and spotless side trays.

 

“Not really.” A soft thud, Wonwoo laughing. “And I found the linen closet. Wanna pick something to sleep on?”

 

Soonyoung picks up a spoon and taps it against one of the stone teacups. “I kind of want to sleep now, to be honest.”

 

Wonwoo comes through the door, carrying an armful of bedding. He stops to study Soonyoung for a second then nods. “Yeah. That’s okay. I’ll make a bed for you?”

 

Soonyoung drops the spoon and nods, rocking in place on his heels. The rain batters against the roof, loud as the hooves of a thousand cavalrymen marching to war. Wonwoo leaves again, glances over his shoulder at Soonyoung as he sits down numbly on the floor and presses his fingers into the mat.

 

He tries to focus on the sounds of Wonwoo in the other room, the thump of the futon as it’s unrolled on the floor and the shuffle of the duvet, but the storm all but drowns it out, roaring in his ears and threatening him with tremendous thrashes and crashes of thunder that pierce the earth. He misses something, he knows. Like a part of him has been carved out and thrown away.

 

Touched by Death.

 

He covers his skin, where the fingerprints had been marked against him, digs deep and tries to remember. Before his reality and his mind became one. Before the ghosts had left him (they’re gone, he realises. Somewhere between Ulsan and Daegu, gone). Had this world ever felt like he belonged here?

 

Wonwoo calls from the other room, and Soonyoung lets go, his fingernails leaving dark crescents in his skin.

 

He doesn’t know.

 

Wonwoo has set up their beds beside each other, neatly made with a stack of pillows in the middle.

 

“Thank you,” Soonyoung says, yawning. He crawls under the covers and curls in on himself.

 

He doesn’t know, but he just has to go on.

  
  


—

 

“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung whispers. A long peal of thunder crests the horizon, somewhere far away. Wonwoo grunts, voice rough with sleep.

 

“What?”

 

“Can you cuddle me?”

 

There’s a rustle as Wonwoo rolls over to face him, his eyes shining in the darkness.

 

“Are you being sincere?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Soonyoung genuinely misses human touch, misses having another body beside him, and Wonwoo is so close and he wants so badly to burrow into him, to ride out this storm with his warmth.

 

Wonwoo squints at him before he answers. “I guess.”

 

Soonyoung shuffles over, pulling his blanket with him. Wonwoo’s body is long and bony, and it takes him a minute to get comfortable, curled into the fetal position with his arm over Wonwoo’s side and his head tucked against his chest. Almost immediately he snuggles closer, pressing his cheek against Wonwoo’s breastbone and whispering a thank you to him.

 

Thunder cracks, once again, bringing lightning that for the smallest second turns the whole room into a diorama, lights it up like a camera flash and freezes the two of them in place. Wonwoo’s skin is warm, bare, beautiful beneath Soonyoung’s fingertips, and he clutches on tighter to him, desperately longing for is touch.

 

“You miss someone?” Wonwoo asks.

 

“Everything,” Soonyoung says. It’s as raw as he’ll ever be, but he realises there’s no time to lie anymore. Lies don’t mean anything when they bring no end. He can only be truthful. “I miss everyone.”

 

Wonwoo wraps a hand around the side of his head and holds him close, his fingers gently playing with the ends of Soonyoung’s hair.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s sombre and gentle, and Soonyoung’s desire, his raw want and curiosity, they’re all swept away, swallowed by the tide and left drifting like flotsam in the sea. There is some reverence in this moment, Wonwoo’s body against his and the rain falling thunderously outside, some fragile feeling of safety afforded by another living thing being here amongst the storm. Soonyoung untucks his head, looks up to see Wonwoo staring, yellow eyes that seem to stare straight through.

 

Maybe they do, maybe he does see through him, in some unreal way—as unreal as Wonwoo himself, because he is not a part of this world, a ruddy smudge on the index of a book. Maybe he knows everything that stirs in Soonyoung’s head, because they get the same idea, the two of them meeting partway, noses bumping as they adjust their positions, Wonwoo pulling back then falling into him. His breath scorches, but his lips are soft, his movements so gentle, and a wave of relief washes over Soonyoung, a tension wrung out from his muscles in waves as Wonwoo kisses him so very slowly, his hand bunching in Soonyoung’s hair. Soonyoung lets his free hand spread across the small of Wonwoo’s back, presses his fingers into his skin and holds himself there, pulls the full weight of his body against his.

 

“Are you okay?” Wonwoo asks. The thunder shatters the sky, a tremendous crash as if heaven has ripped itself open, the skies weeping for them.

 

“I’m okay,” Soonyoung says. “I promise you.”

 

Wonwoo tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear, the gesture far too gentle for what he is. Soonyoung wants to ask, he wants to know more, has to know more, but Wonwoo is still an innumerable amount of mysteries, all wrapped tightly in this pursed lipped and stoic act Soonyoung has started to see crack.

 

“I worry for you,” Wonwoo says. There’s the crack— the burst of lightning when the facade splits down the middle, white sheets parted like the curtain of a stage for all the world to see the act fall apart.

 

“Why?” Soonyoung asks. He presses a kiss against Wonwoo’s lips, again, slowly, listens to the breaths he takes and the way it changes with the touch of Soonyoung’s lips, every time he moves and his fingers dig into the bare skin on the small of Wonwoo’s back.

 

Wonwoo parts with him with a soft exhale, nuzzles his face with the tip of his nose. “You look like you’ve seen more in your lifetime than most of us see in millenia.”

 

“It’s my curse,” Soonyoung says, flatly. He doesn’t want to talk about this, not now, not with the thunder breaking overhead and the whole world liable to collapse in on itself at every moment. He has but only one life to live and reality, the living and undead, all the dryads who spilled forth from the mountains and stole the soil’s fertility with their hooves and poisoned tipped spears, all of this is too much for him. This is his moment and he will not lose it.. “You know that, now. And that’s all it’ll ever be.”

 

He pushes into Wonwoo, kisses deeper. “You have your burdens, too.” Soonyoung says. He taps at Wonwoos’s calf and tangles their legs together. “They have brought us together. Let’s use them.”

 

“To do what?” Wonwoo asks. He squeezes his hand tight, fingers threaded through Soonyoung’s hair.

 

“Find a home when you have none anymore.”

 

Wonwoo kisses his jaw. “And with your curse, you think you know where home is?”

 

“No,” Soonyoung says. “I won’t pretend. But I want answers, and none of them will be found here.”

 

“No,” Wonwoo says. The thunder is so close Soonyoung feels it in his bones, the china in the cupboards shaking dangerously. “It’s just a pitstop on the great journey to solve this fuckery.”

 

Soonyoung, comforted in the mere warmth of Wonwoo’s body, squeezes him tight. “I am a human. And I will fight. This is my home, I have no choice. Whether I lose myself to Death, or my soul to you, or if I find there is nothing left, I have to do it. It’s a part of me.”

 

Wonwoo exhales, long and slow. “I’m sorry,” he says. His breath tickles against Soonyoung’s skin.

 

“It’s okay,” Soonyoung says. He presses a light kiss, on the length of Wonwoo’s neck where he frustratedly stares at the ceiling. “We’re just—humans. In one way or another.”

 

“But I’m not,” Wonwoo says. His body presses against Soonyoung, so warm, burning with brimstone and the fires of hell.

 

“One way or another,” Soonyoung repeats. “All we want is a home, right?”

 

Wonwoo doesn’t answer. He just leans in again and captures Soonyoung’s mouth, runs his thumbs along his cheeks and kisses him deep. Soonyoung wraps his arms around him, and the lightning breaks the sky.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

3.

 

The ruler of the underworld sits upon her throne of marble, dead vines curled around her ankles and raven's feathers growing from the jut of her shoulders. Her clothes are like burial robes, worn and tattered, and when she turns her eyes towards Soonyoung he senses something cold behind them—a force that would swallow his soul whole regardless of who—or what—he was.

 

The entrance to her realm had been outside of the storm that had chased them, through a winding valley of lillies and white blossom petals that had seemed undisturbed for millenia. The grass was soft with dew and the walls of the path were moss covered, humming with something long forgotten. They had descended down, down, seemingly never ending until the rock formed a roof over their heads and phosphorescent spores clung to the cave waves, braziers dotted inbetween lighting their path.

 

“You've travelled so far,” Death says, her voice rough as the dirtied floor beneath their bare feet. “From east to west,” she tilts her head, “and north to south. You’ve taken many roads, and yet they all have lead you here.”

 

Her words are deliberate, not slow but pronounced as each if had been given careful thought, wispy at the edges and echoing. Soonyoung feels each of them settle in his mind, carve their own home and stay there, a supreme importance no other could think to match. Death was, in her own ethereal way, divine.

 

“We were told you had answers,” Wonwoo says. He takes a step forward, out of the shadow and into the ghostly light. Death turns her gaze to him and raises her eyebrows.

 

“How droll,” she says. “A devil in the underworld. You’re a bold one, aren't you, Jeon Wonwoo?”

 

“I'd say stupid,” Wonwoo says. Death chuckles.

 

“The difference is in the execution.” She pauses. “No pun meant, of course.”

 

Soonyoung doesn't know if he's supposed to laugh or not.

 

“I have answers, of course,” Death continues, “though not to the questions you might want to ask.” She narrows her eyes for a split second and then rises, the light bulbs flickering in the chandeliers, all the light sucked from the air and returned at once, as if they are trapped in a great pair of lungs.

 

“But I will give them. Come,” she beckons to them, “You must be tired. Stay a while.”

 

Her footsteps turn the world monochrome and no sound made where they fall upon the marble tiles. She pauses on the last step of the plinth and looks back at them, questioning.

 

“You _ will _ stay a while?” 

 

“Of course,” Wonwoo says. Death smiles and nods her head.

 

“I knew there was use in letting you free,” she says. Soonyoung has no idea what she means, but Wonwoo, he thinks, must, because he averts his eyes when Soonyoung looks for an answer, stares somewhere to the side of the room, at the base of the chipped columns that stop the roof from falling in on top of them.

 

Death takes the ebony walking stick from beside her seat and raps it against the floor, pausing for the dramatic change the action has on her appearance. A slim diadem of pitch black metal grows from her brow and her rags turns to liquid, melding to her form like oil, covering her from toe to neck and twisting the reflections of the great ghostly braziers burning beside the arches. The raven’s feathers that once encircled her shoulders become a mantle, giving the appearance of wings as they stretch when she raises her arm to dismiss a will-o-wisp floating near her head. Her fingers curl, and the door in front of her swings open with an ominous creak.

 

“Come, stay with me.”

 

Soonyoung knows he has no choice but to mutely follow.

 

Beyond the main room the halls are more welcoming, the light cast from the chandeliers warm like melting honey, the black carpet plush beneath their steps and the arches over the doorways detailed in golden filament. The artwork that fills the empty spaces has no discernable origin, spans every time and culture Soonyoung could possibly imagine and ones he didn’t know existed. Abstract splashes of colours his eyes can barely comprehend hang beside tapestries of war that stretch for fifty meters or more, and he has to will himself to keep walking, to not stare at what must be beyond priceless art.

 

Death leads them through the halls, up staircases that spiral like hurricanes, through a conservatory that seems like a jungle, past endless rows of workers at desks. Some of the doors they pass are cracked open and Soonyoung snatches glimpses of other worlds, of things he can barely begin to understand - prismatic beings being pulled apart, lost souls floating in darkness, a huddle of naked bodies with no faces and a lion with three heads being fed by a man wearing only an iron mask. 

 

“I wouldn’t stare,” Death says, as they pass a room where the occupant has made no attempt to close the door. Inside are hundreds of empty wine bottles, stacked on shelves that surround a bloodsoaked sleeping giant. “Things you see here tend to stay in your memory. Best you not bother yourself.”

 

“What are they?” Soonyoung asks. Death laughs airily.

 

“Things that have been accumulated. Memories. Oddities.”

 

“Are they yours?”

 

“Everything here is mine,” she says. “I enjoy collecting.”

 

“Evidently,” Soonyoung says, realising almost immediately  _ what  _ he just said and to  _ whom _ he said it. His stomach drops, but Death just chuckles.

 

“Oh come on,” she says, turning back to show a wry grin on her ageless face. “It’s not all lost souls and making judgement. I’m allowed to have fun, am I not?”

 

They pass through another archway and the lighting once more changes dramatically, the room opening up into a conservatory, vines as thick as Soonyoung’s thigh curling up tree trunks and curiously shaped butterflies fluttering around his head. They pass through the room quickly, and Soonyoung wishes he could have stopped there, explored all it had to offer him.

 

In another life, perhaps.

 

“Some of the items here are,” Death continues, “shall I say, in quarantine.”

 

“From what?”

 

“The outside world.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Death laughs, again, this one deeper, more in her stomach, echoes as if the noise came from a hundred disembodied mouths who surrounded him from every side.

 

“Don’t worry too much,” she says. “I’ll keep you safe. It is my job, after all, and the paperwork would be  _ so  _ very messy if something were to eat you.”

 

He doesn’t find it reassuring in the slightest, and is thankful when wind down one last staircase and finally stop moving, standing in front of an unassuming door that melts away at the touch of Death’s palm.

 

“The grand tour is over,” she sighs. She sweeps into the room, her mantle billowing out as if caught by a gust of wind. Her skin seems the consistency of tar, reflecting things that can’t possibly be there, faces with names Soonyoung thought he had long forgotten, cities burnt out before the wheel of time had barely turned and wars that were yet to be fought.

 

Soonyoung follows her, Wonwoo last, and though the door had never been opened it shuts with an ominous thud, reverberating through the walls of the room.

 

Death’s next step is short, but the fall of her heel is obvious, and with it the space lights up, flames sweeping along the candles on the walls, chandeliers lighting up and the heart roaring into life. The ambience is less ghostly, more comforting, and Soonyoung feels some relief at the vague sense of familiarity it instills in him. Like the rest of the complex the room is constructed of stone, black and white marble, columns holding the bowed roof and ornaments of gold running around the bevel of every surface. The table in the centre is constructed of the same black stone, and in the middle of it sits an orb slowly rotating, viscous liquid gently flowing across it’s surface.

 

Death pours herself a cup of tea and crosses her legs, rests an ankle upon her calf and tilts her head to regard the two of them.

 

“My, my,” she says. “Two faces I never thought I’d have to greet again. From oh so far away, straight to my domain. Tell me what, again, what answers do you seek?”

 

Soonyoung feels like a child with a genie, with three wishes for infinite possibility, except there’s no joy, no glee in them. Death commands their attention and sucks all hope for life from the air, appears larger than life and makes Soonyoung realise just how much of a speck he must be to her.

 

“What’s happening?” Soonyoung asks. Death raises an eyebrow and pauses to sip her tea.

 

“Upheaval. A turning of worlds and an atonement for your sins.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Don’t ask me why. I just collect the lost souls.”

 

“How can you not know why?”

 

“This isn’t the only plane I deal with, Kwon Soonyoung.”

 

The way she says his name stops him cold, drains the blood from his face and the breath from his lungs. Her eyes are dead and bottomless, and he’s falling, slowly, tipping inwards, a low buzz of voices building in the back of his head like a mindless symphony. In her eyes he sees nothing — he sees the end, the rivers dried up and the bones kissed by the sunlight. He sees the rainforests broken and thrashed, and he hears the thunder, the strike of the cello as the symphony screeches above this rainless waste.

 

Death blinks. Soonyoung’s ears ring with thunderclaps.

 

“Was there anything else?” She asks.

 

“Why?” Soonyoung asks, again. Death laughs. 

 

“Why you?”

 

“Why me? Why inflict me with this curse? Why am I still standing? Why does any of this matter?”

 

Another wry laugh. “Slow down, child. Why this matters is the world must keep spinning and sometimes things knock it off axis—sometimes ones hubris will bite one in the ass. Like humanity has so helpfully done.”

 

“You just wiped us out for nothing?”

 

“I,” Death begins, reaching for her cane. “Did not do anything.” She taps the end of the staff on the floor and at once Soonyoung realises what it is, the length of her scythe unfurling into a wicked damascus steel blade, the surface glowing with pitch black runes. “I have told you what I do. I have told you what I know. There was no planned destruction— your kind brought this upon yourself.” Death stands from her seat, her footsteps near gliding across the floor. “I’m beginning to think this offer of hospitality was ill guided. Unless the demon has better manners than you.”

 

She hooks the end of her scythe under Wonwoo’s chin and lifts his head to face her.

 

“Does your master know you’ve gone wandering, Jeon Wonwoo?” She asks with a tilt of the head. Wonwoo’s throat bobs nervously. Soonyoung is frozen, in fear, in despair, in whatever hideous energy seems to be sapping his very self from his bones. He wants nothing more than to leap from his chair and knock Death away but he realises it’s foolish to even entertain the idea—a mere human contending with this cosmic force over a  _ demon’s _ life.

 

“Leave him alone,” Soonyoung says, voice cracking slightly. “He didn’t do anything.”

 

Wonwoo isn’t just a demon, Soonyoung realises, as Death turns to him, lowers her scythe. Wonwoo is his friend. His companion. The only living thing that’s been through this distorted hell-ride with him. It feels like they’ve lived a thousand years together in the space of days, and Soonyoung knows then and there, that he would fight for Wonwoo, not matter what he was. Wonwoo is something more than that, an enigma that made so little effort to conceal itself and unwravelled beautifully before Soonyoung. Since the first time they’d met, eyes across that smoke filled room, Soonyoung had felt the spark, once rivalry turned into a bond that he would literally face Death to protect.

 

“Of course not,” Death says, “but not many demons escape their shackles of their home planet. Certainly not someone as prolific as you, Wonwoo.”

 

Wonwoo touches his neck. “Are they following me?” He asks.

 

Death raps her scythe on the ground and turns, mantle billowing. “How would you expect me to know that?”

 

“You’re Death,” Wonwoo says. She nods.

 

“Not sight, not the northern stars, not the interplanar police. Heavens, I have no idea if anyone is following you. I barely keep track of myself.”

 

Soonyoung is lost, Death’s demeanor ping-ponging between the elegance he’d grown accustomed to, to something wild, to the grinning heiress she suddenly represents as she twirls her scythe in her hands. “Anything more?” She says.

 

“Where do we go?” Soonyoung asks. Death sighs and turns back to him, one last time, her skin practically dripping away from her body as it loses shape.

 

“Follow the thunder.”


	4. epilogue

 

They exit in a subway station, where the roof has fallen in and rubble is scattered across the platform. A single carriage is still docked and its doors have been wrenched open by some great invisible hand, pulled so hard the metal buckles at the edges. A smear of something dark streaks across the concrete, splatters pooling at the edges, and water drips from the hole in the ceiling, a steady rhythm in the otherwise silence. He and Wonwoo climb the defunct elevators together and emerge into the sunlight, in the midst of a city long forgotten. The cranes have collapsed and weeds grow through the cracks in the road, winding along the faded markings like snakes. Stagnant water pools under the torn awnings and the wind is hot and dry, carrying sand and the hot breath of the desert down the main road.

 

In the distance, thunder rumbles, shaking the earth and jostling his bones. Wonwoo looks to him and Soonyoung just nods.

 

“We follow her, right?” Wonwoo says.

 

“Do we have a choice?” 

 

Soonyoung’s footsteps echo amongst the skyscrapers.

 

“We always have a choice,” Wonwoo says.

 

On the water's edge, with the desert stretched behind them as if they've journeyed through it their whole life. The knife of the mountain range cuts the sky and Wonwoo looks hesitant as the sea laps at his ankles, staring back over his shoulder for some imagined spectre. Grains of sand catch on the breeze and scatter across his skin and he takes a long breath, salt and ozone in his throat.

 

A billow of birds rise from the broken horizon like smoke and dissipate into the pale clouds. The silence holds, only the waves breaking against the shore in the distance, only the splash of their steps through the glimmering ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wish i'd had more time and more energy to make this what i truly wanted it to be, but as it is i am so happy it even managed to get finished. thank you again to historiologies for her endless patience in giving me extension after extension for this - it means the world to me. thank you to juli for the beta, as always, for being tireless in your picking out of my awful sentences and breathing life into wonwoo. and thank you to yen, for all the music, for listening to me bang my head against a wall about this, for encouraging me to join this exchange in the first place. you're both the best cheerleaders i could have ever asked for.
> 
> thank you again, to you, for reading.


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